Argon Channel = failure

The Argon modchip guys have been trumping up this new cool thing they call the Argon Channel. At first details were sketchy, but as time passed what it was started to become obvious: some homebrew launching or installing “solution”, locked to a modchip.

Update: Their solution seems to be to install homebrew packaged as channels, complete with stolen banners and probably using my nandloader without permission. Scroll down for more details.

Recently, the Argon guys showed up on IRC and had an interesting conversation with me, where they tried to get me to help them get the channel to work on System Menu 3.4 by convincing me of the wonderful world of modchip software. The conversation was somewhere along the lines of this, excluding the broken English: “By bundling it with our modchip we make homebrew more popular”. “But it’s locked to your modchip, how will that make it more popular?” “Yes, that makes it even more popular because it’s exclusive and people will want it.”

The response, obviously, was no.

Now the channel has showed up and gasp, it’s compatible with 3.4. Wait, did they find an exploit?

Of course they didn’t.

By watching the video you’ll see that it consists of a two-stage process. This should start ringing alarm bells: why on earth would they have to install two things to install the channel? You’ll also notice that before installing the second half, they do some sort of serial number verification. This seems to be their way of locking it to the chip.

Download their package. First alarm bell. They’re bundling the Twilight Hack, which they’re not authorized to do. Hmm.

Let’s look inside the first DOL file - which turns out to be the one labeled part2. They’re backwards. Shows how much time they spent preparing this package. This file looks suspiciously like a Waninkoko product - same banner and console style. Let’s look inside.

That looks like a WAD header. Interestingly, `strings’ didn’t show any readable four-letter Title ID among the Root-CA strings from the certs, TMD, and ticket. Let’s run it through a WAD extraction tool that I have, which prints out information:

Title ID 00000001-00000010 is IOS16. So this is how they get it to work on 3.4. And this is also why there’s a two-stage process. They’re bundling a private, repair center only, leaked IOS from nintendo.

Ladies and gentlemen, epic fail.

So, Argon's "Channel" is nothing more than the Homebrew Channel and IOS16 bundled and locked to their modchip. Wow.